We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is.

When I was very little, I probably wanted to be more normal. I probably wanted the Laura Ashley bedroom, and instead I got thrift-store everything.

I spend a lot of time obsessing about getting a dignified eight hours' sleep.

Maybe that's why people take pictures of themselves, to avoid being described.

This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming of something else.

She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.

I supposed this was one reason why people got married, to make a fiction that was tellable. It wasn’t just movies that couldn’t contain the full cast of characters — it was us. We had to winnow life down so we knew where to put our tenderness and attention; and that was a good, sweet thing. But together or alone, we were still embedded in a kaleidoscope, ruthlessly varied and continuous, until the end of the end.